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This article is initiated by the writer’s response to a criticism from an editor that they ‘cleave to the transcendent in art’ and also inspired by the discovery of James McMullan’s 1970s illustrations for New York Magazine, which formed the aesthetic and narrative basis for the Saturday Night Fever movie. These two, seemingly unconnected factors, come together to conjure and weave a discussion of the relative qualities and values of immanence and transcendence. It uses examples drawn from art and with particular reference to a range of painters with greatly differing styles, and from different eras, but compared and considered here as con-temporary (sharing the time of the article and its writing).